`Catch a Fire' examines torture

review B+

Phillip Noyce's Catch a Fire, the story of a black South African whose torture at the hands of the apartheid government transforms him from an apolitical family man to a dedicated counterrevolutionary, is both a condemnation of torture as a political tool and a tribute to the bravery that exists within everyone.

Derek Luke (Antwone Fisher) stars as Patrick Chamusso, who deals with life in the racially segregated South Africa of 1980 as best he can. He has a good job, working as a foreman at an oil refinery, and does whatever's necessary to placate the white government officials who use terror, intimidation and blatantly inhuman laws to retain their power (no easy feat, in a country where blacks outnumber whites more than 8-to-1). That holds true at both his job, where he carefully and unobtrusively does his boss' bidding, and in his personal life, where he has learned to turn submissive whenever the face addressing him is white